The lawless and fantastic
shapes of his own imagination need, even for their own perfect
embodiment, the discipline of the common perception. The phantoms of the
individual brain, left to their own waywardness, lose all solidity and
become like primary forms of life, instead of the penultimate forms they
should be. For the poet himself must move securely among his visions;
they must be not less certain and steadfast than men are. To anchor
them he needs intelligible myth. Nothing less than a supremely great
genius can save him if he ventures into the vast without a landmark
visible to other eyes than his own. Blake had a supremely great genius
and was saved in part. The masculine vigour of his passion gave
stability to the figures of his imagination. They are heroes because
they are made to speak like heroes. Even in Blake's most recondite work
there is always the moment when the clouds are parted and we recognise
the austere and awful countenances of gods. The phantasmagoria of the
dreamer have been mastered by the sheer creative will of the poet.
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